Let Me Eat Cake

Few tweaks this batch, one major and one minor.

First, the minor tweak: last batch I used the hand mixer to mix in the flour and this resulted in some over-mixing, which (according to what I can find on the interwebs) was the cause of the unusually tall centers. This time I stirred the flour in by hand and had no unexpected eruptions in the middle.

The major tweak was to do a post-soak with some syrup. I mixed up half a cup of honey with a quarter cup of triple sec, tossed in some cinnamon and cayenne, heated it up until it mixed and was nicely liquid, then brushed it over the cakes after poking a bunch of holes in them.

I was unsure of whether to do the soak before or after taking them out of the pans, but I figured that doing it while the cake was hot would allow it to soak in better, and being in the pans would also serve to catch any excess that spilled off and encourage it to soak back in.

These two issues seemed to work out well, but it did mean that by the time I flipped the cake out of the pans, a bit of the top ended up sticking to me rather than the cake, and I was forced to eat the bits of sticky cake shrapnel that had adhered to my palm. What a burden.

Plans might change once I sample a slice, but if I don't notice anything particularly unusual I might try soaking the cake after removing it from the pan on the next batch. I might also invert the ratio of honey to hooch to make it less sticky and more soak-ey. We'll see.

Science.